Learning Insights: Jay Stevens champions learner engagement

Chief Learning Officer’s “Learning Insights” series is dedicated to showcasing the thoughts and career journeys of chief learning officers and learning executives — the tireless trailblazers who are transforming the landscape of corporate learning and workforce development. In this Q&A series, we garner strategic insights, innovative approaches and challenges overcome from visionary leaders worldwide. 

What initially drew you to a career in L&D, and how have your experiences evolved over the years?

It started as a job that seemed like it would be fun and over the years it has developed into something more. It’s fulfilling, exciting and still fun.

What key initiatives have you implemented as a learning leader to drive employee development and foster a learning culture?

Under my guard, we moved to a fully virtual classroom, expanded our e-learning content to over 500 assets and developed a high-quality team of subject matter experts that our customers rely on for great learning opportunities.

What is the most impactful learning program you’ve introduced in your organization, and how has it contributed to employee growth and business success?

Switching from a very limited in-person training experience to an online first approach, we were able to give access to quality learning to our customers all over the country.

What is a common misconception people might have about the L&D function, and how do you address it?

That online live training isn’t fun. It can be and if you keep it light and fun, you can keep the learners engaged and motivated to learn.

What excites you the most about the future of workplace learning, and how are you preparing your organization to adapt to the changing landscape?

We are now developing a new contact approach that should lead our learners to feel that it’s more of a personal training and learning experience for them and still host the training in the live online classroom.

What essential qualities or skills make a successful L&D leader, and how do you cultivate these traits in yourself and among your team?

Big-picture ideas from leadership followed up by high-quality, creative subject matter experts. Collaboration and open communication is critical in everything we do.

What game-changing advice would you offer if you could go back in time and mentor your younger self?

Keep the end in mind. Always make sure you are always moving forward and it’s OK to try new things! If they work, great, but not all of them will and that’s OK!

What do you feel is currently the single biggest challenge facing L&D professionals and the industry as a whole?

Retaining learners’ attention! Keeping people engaged has gotten more difficult in a world of instant gratification from sources like YouTube and Google.

We’re always looking to showcase innovative tools and technologies. Can you share one work or learning tech product or platform that has significantly improved your work processes and why you find it valuable?

To cut our production budget to make room for a higher-end LMS we have turned to the humble PowerPoint for creating video trainings! We build the course, add voice-over to each slide and then publish it as an MP4 video. Our content is focused on using our banking platform and using this method allows us to make small changes very fast to the content, replacing maybe just one slide and then republish. It saves us a lot of time and a lot of money. The only piece we miss is the testing piece, but our LMS offers that for us.

Interested in being featured in our “Learning Insights” series? Please complete this FORM.